A Minnesota-based farm supply and grain marketing cooperative, Crystal Valley, has become the second agricultural business to be seized by a ransomware attack this week. The cooperative had been alerted to the attack on Sunday, September 19, and released a statement on its website Tuesday afternoon. As of Wednesday afternoon, the site had been knocked offline and was still down.
The ransomware attack targeted the computer systems and payment systems. Local credit cards continue to work in the payment systems, but Visa, Mastercard and Discover cannot be accepted at its cardtrols. The first attack of ransomware on an agricultural cooperative was earlier in the weekend at an Iowa farm collective, NEW Cooperative. The frist attack was attributed to ransomware gang BlackMatter. BlackMatter is demanding a 5.9 million ransom for a decryptor. The strain of ransomware and ransom amount from the attack on Crystal Valley is not yet known.
Read more: Crystal Valley Farm Coop Hit with Ransomware